The league of robots meets the touch-sensitive garden

A competition that awards grants to worthy student-led charity projects gives young Russians the knowledge that they can really change their communities - and maybe even their country.

Anton Pashkevich of
Novosibirsk State Technological University (NSTU) is troubled that Russian
schoolchildren don’t want to work towards engineering degrees. “The majority of
my former classmates study economics or law. Meanwhile, available research
shows that Russia will soon need engineers rather than people with an education
in the humanities,” he said. Pashkevich is not the only one concerned.
President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly pointed to the urgent need to make
engineering a more prestigious profession.

Pashkevich suggests
that robots be used to “entice” schoolchildren into studying at institutes of
technology. The League of Robots team wants to buy several Lego kits to
assemble transformer robots, recruit several teams from local schools, and
stage something like a battle of robots between the teams. Those wanting to
continue studying robots will be invited to join a robotics group specifically
created at NSTU. Incidentally, NSTU students have already held a roundtable
discussion with schoolchildren, where they discovered that more than 60 percent
are interested in robots but know little about them and often do not even
realize that robots have long been part of everyday life. This means that the
only reason engineering is unpopular among school kids is that they just don’t
know what modern-day engineers do. Many of those engaged in the battle of
robots will presumably become their creators in the future.

Girls from
Vladivostok, meanwhile, want to build a special touch-sensitive garden for
children with poor eyesight. There is a daycare center for such toddlers in
their city, but it lacks a playground. Playgrounds for visually impaired kids
are available, though: They are made up of flowerbeds with various plants or
alleys with different surfaces. There are only two such playgrounds in Russia.
If the girls bring theirs to life, the third such playground will soon appear
in the Russian Far East.

These are just two of
50 projects envisioned by volunteers from a summer school sponsored by Vladimir
Potanin’s Fund; a similar program has been around since 2008. Prior to that,
the Fund had engaged solely in handing out scholarships, selecting several
dozen winners from each of Russia’s 60 best public universities. As Irina
Ostarkova, deputy director of the Fund, puts it, one day it dawned upon them
all that it was not enough to award scholarships to straight-A students –kids
should also be encouraged to be more socially active. And then the students
themselves came up with the idea for volunteer projects. The organizers were
surprised at the number of volunteers – every time they receive more than 100 requests,
and the best are awarded grants.

The volunteer movement
in Russia is still in its early stages, but this does not mean there is no one
eager to selflessly help those in need. Last year’s forest fires showed that
many people are willing to lend a helping hand in a time of need. It was
largely thanks to volunteer efforts that the fast-spreading fires were
extinguished, yet many people wanting to volunteer simply do not know where to
go, due to a lack of available information.

Meanwhile, young
people seem to be coming up with many exciting ideas of how to change life for
the better – they need only to be given a nudge. Students from Tver University increased
the number of blood donors in their city. Before their project, there were only
six donors per 1,000 residents (an good target is 25-30 donors). “It turned out
that most students did not know anything about giving blood. What is more, they
were misled by numerous myths of how dangerous and risky being a donor might
be. We lectured at auditoriums on the importance of blood donation, opened a
blood-donation site at our university, and were the first to donate blood,” said
Yulia Saranova, a participant in the first volunteer program launched by the
Potanin Fund. Now, two blood donor days a year are organized in Tver.

But to win a grant, its not enough to come up
with a nice idea. Applicants also need to put together a budget, justify the expenditures
to demanding experts, assess possible risks and, most importantly, explain the motivation
for the project. It means that the students get something more than just a
grant: they realize that they can really change something in their university,
city and maybe even their entire country. I believe this is worth more.